Mixing A Pop Rock Song From Scratch With Sonnox Plugins

In this mix breakdown of the transformation of a demo consisting solely of an acoustic guitar and vocal recording, we asked producer and mix engineer Alyssa Wilkens to turn the recording into a fully fledged pop rock track, with Sonnox plug-ins at the helm of the engineering process throughout production.

The project uses plug-ins from the Sonnox Core Studio Collection throughout. The production moves from acoustic guitar and a washed out vocal to piano, electric guitars, live drums, strings and a polished final mix.

Starting with the song

The original demo already had two things the production needed to preserve: a compelling vocal and a strong sense of drama. The lyrics tell the story of discovering that someone she was seeing already had a girlfriend. The song feels hurt, but it still has energy, so the production needed to keep that tension alive.

The first idea was to make a stripped back acoustic track. Acoustic guitars were double tracked, panned left and right respectively, and the early arrangement was built around them.

To bring the guitars under control, Wilkens used Oxford Dynamic EQ to reduce low end boominess when it became prominent, followed by EQ for further tone shaping. A little compression smoothed the louder strums, while Oxford Reverb’s Small Room preset gave the guitars a sense of space. Filtering the reverb helped it sit behind the guitars without sounding too bright or taking over the mix.

The acoustic version sounded good, but it did not have enough energy. That was a useful clue: the song needed a different direction.

Building a stronger foundation

The next version introduced bass and programmed drums. Instead of asking one bass sound to do everything, Wilkens layered a distorted bass for grit with synthesised bass parts for low end weight. That let the bass retain some character while still giving the track a solid foundation.

The drums were built up with a full sounding kit and added kick and snare samples for extra impact. On the drum bus, Claro helped shape the overall tone, while Oxford Limiter and Oxford Inflator added energy and presence.

Rather than forcing the acoustic guitar to remain the centre of the arrangement, a piano part was introduced into the production. Its more introspective sound worked well with the vocal and gave the track a stronger opening. They kept a small acoustic guitar picking part and brought some strums back in the pre chorus, but removed most of the acoustic arrangement.

That change helped reveal the song’s pop rock identity. As Wilkens puts it in the video, trying an idea and later removing it can still help you understand what the song needs.

Creating a wall of electric guitars

Electric guitar became a major part of the arrangement. Clean strums introduce the sound in the pre chorus, preparing the listener for the fuller guitars in the chorus. In the second verse and chorus, several guitar layers combine to create a wide, dense sound.

Oxford TransMod helped the strums and pick attack cut through, while EQ and compression brought the layers into balance. The aim was to make room for the bass and other instruments while keeping enough definition and brightness in the guitars.

Additional riffs bring movement to the instrumental and bridge sections. One of the more atmospheric parts uses Oxford Reverb’s Large Concert Room preset, with a longer decay and a wetter balance to help the guitar sit further back in the mix.

Adding live drums and percussion

The programmed drums gave the track a foundation, but the arrangement needed more human feel and movement. Live drums were then recorded and augmented with the original programmed drums into a single performance.

Oxford Drum Gate 2 helped clean up the recorded drum tracks by aligning their timing and phase relationships, and by controlling spill from the microphones. The original samples stayed in the arrangement at a lower level to add thickness beneath the live performance.

Bringing the strings to life

Adding strings gave the song another lift; the arrangement combines sustained notes, moving counter melodies and short staccato parts. Layering these different roles helped the MIDI strings feel more expressive alongside the live drums and vocal.

Oxford Inflator added saturation and detail to the string group, helping the parts feel more present. A large reverb placed them in a spacious setting that supported the song’s dramatic moments.

Keeping the vocal at the centre

The vocal chain included tuning and editing, followed by Voca for compression and saturation (the Auto Gain feature helped even out the vocal level before compression). The compression and saturation were then tuned to taste to help Gray’s performance cut through the dense arrangement, using the Soften control to manage any added harshness.

The backing vocals widen and thicken the lead, while the bridge layers add a more unusual texture to that section.

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